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Friday, March 9, 2018

And here's another article about one of my plays, a preview of a production of The Enchanted Bookshop by the Kearney Community Theatre.

In it, co-director Judy Rozema describes how theater builds community in their small Nebraska town. Not only did they get a huge turnout for auditions (75 children for 25 roles), but the kids who got cast come from 15 different schools and represent a wide variety of interests, from die-hard theater types to math whizzes to musicians.

"It just shows you that the arts can involve everyone. It encompasses all sorts of groups of people and personalities. It brings them together to make something that is a joint effort across so many areas of different interests."

More than half of the kids have never acted before.

"And they are loving it," Rozema adds. "This is something that is timeless, something that's not going to die regardless of what the funding does."

Thank you, Judy, and all you hard-working directors out there for making this something possible.

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

I remember the first time I saw my name in print. I was about ten and it was printed in the local paper, the Beaver Dam (WI) Daily Citizen.

I don't remember what it was for, probably some Cub Scout activity. But I remember how proud I felt. And I remember all the greeting cards my parents received with a clipping of the article inside (yes, in those ancient days of the 1970's, they actually sold greeting cards that said, "I saw you in the newspaper...").

So I think it's a pretty big deal when young actors get a mention in their local paper for the hard word they put into the production and the excellence of their performances.

That was the case for this article in The Greenville (AL) Advocate. It's a review of the middle school's production of Rumpelstiltskin, Private Eye and the author makes a point of giving a shout-out to every single performer in this large-cast play.

I hope these mentions mean as much to them as mine did to me. And who knows? Maybe one of them will grow up to see their name in print a thousand times over as a playwright or actor... or even a kindhearted critic.